Analyze
four examples of presidential campaign ads – one each from Trump and Clinton in
the 2016 election and two from a previous election (2012 or earlier). Discuss the
audience demographic/s the ad was targeting and whether you think the ad was
effective in its messaging for its target audience/s. You should refer to Ch. 4
in Denton and at least one additional reading posted for this week to support
your analysis. Note: the website “The Living Room Candidate” (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/)
is a good place to locate presidential campaign ads.
Samantha Nardone 1
ReplyDeleteThe first ad that I looked at was Trump’s comparative ad about his America compared to Clinton’s. This ad, unlike most of Trump’s speeches, was very controlled and conscience. The intended audience is moderate and conservative voters that care about immigration and border security. This was also the very first television advertisement that the Trump campaign used, released in mid-August to start reaching out to Republicans who felt they were not included in Trump’s America. In the ad, he shows them that his priorities a line with theirs’. He also focuses on keeping people safe which echoed the convention rhetoric. I think the messaging in this ad was effective because while Trump is reaching out to the voters that would help win him the election, he is also implying that Clinton was to let criminals in and open the border. For single-issue voters that only care about immigration, this message is all they need to hear to identify with Trump. I think it is also important to remember that Trump did not spend as much money as Clinton on television ads. In her article, 'It might work too well' - The dark art of political advertising online, Julia Carrie Wong says,” US presidential campaigns are often remembered – and understood – by their advertisements. Lyndon B Johnson’s “Daisy” ad powerfully (and controversially) set the stakes of an election in a nuclear world. George HW Bush’s “Willie Horton” attack ad still epitomizes the racist dog-whistle politics of the tough-on-crime era. The message, as much as the messenger, is a key part of the debate over who is best equipped to lead the country.” Wong then goes on to say that we do not get that with Trump. In fact, I think people will remember him more from Clinton’s ads against him, such as the one I looked at called “Role Models.”
Samantha Nardone 2
DeleteThroughout the election, Clinton released TV ads that were emotional and focused on children. I think “Role Models” was brilliant, but I’m not sure how effective it actually was. In the Denton chapter, the author says, “ The clear implication is that Trump’s rhetoric places him outside of the realm of acceptable candidates for president. This focus on character rather than policy would set the tone for Clinton’s advertising throughout the rest of the election.” Clinton focused too much on Trump in her ads. She basically gave him airtime, even though he was saying horrible things; he was still the center of the ad. The audience is clearly parents, but I do not think this would change anyone’s mind. People who already support Clinton loved the ad and could point to it as a reason for others to choose her. However, undecideds most likely want to hear a reference to policy not character because at this point voters already knew who Trump was, they needed a policy reason to abandon him.
I selected two ads from the 2012 election, one from each of the candidates. The Romney ad “Be Not Afraid” is a direct call to action for religious groups, specifically Catholics and Evangelical Christians. I think this was Romney’s way of ensuring Christians that his Mormon faith would not affect his presidency and that he had their best interests at heart. He also hits Obama on the Affordable Care Act to show voters his intention to roll it back. The Obama ad “The Choice,” specifically focuses on the differences between the economic plans of the two candidates. I think this advertising is effective not just in showing that Obama’s plan is superior but it also shows who Obama is a person. He is respectful of Romney and offers clear points as to why his trickle down plan won’t work. He is also speaking directly to the audience for the whole ad, unlike the other ads I looked at. I think his target audience was middle-class voters who wanted to see the economy strengthened.
Works Cited:
Denton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Wong, J. C. (2018, March 19). 'It might work too well': The dark art of political advertising online. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy
DiSalvo 1
ReplyDeleteTV Advertising in 2016 was less prominent than in past years because “Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump famously spurned campaign ads in 2016, preferring to get free publicity by going on cable TV and making newsworthy remarks at his rallies”(Beckwith). However, several memorable ads did result from the election. Both Trump and Clinton made use of comparative ads which portrayed the opponent in a negative light while highlighting their own positive attributes.
In an ad entitled, “Deplorables” Trump began with a clip of Hillary Clinton addressing a group of wealthy donors. She referred to Trump supporters as “A basket of deplorables”(“Deplorable”). The ad then featured clips of his supporters at his rallies and in the community while a voice-over reassured these Americans they are not deplorable. Rather it went on to state it is ”deplorable” how Clinton categorized hard-working Americans.
I think this ad was effective. Trump united his base under one label— hard-working. Trump’s supporters are typically working-class Americans who are referred to as “the forgotten men.” In this ad, Trump addressed his base directly saying, “hard working people like YOU” (“Deplorables”) were the ones being demonized by Clinton. By calling them out, they didn’t feel forgotten anymore. This tactic seemed to work--Trump won states in the “forgotten country” like West Virginia by large margins. Clinton was conversely portrayed as a divisive leader who would only govern to certain demographics.
Clinton’s ad, “Mirrors” began with her embracing a young girl. Then the ad pictured women and girls looking at themselves critically in the mirror with Trump’s voice in the background saying things like, “I’d look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers”(“Mirrors”). It ended with a black screen that read, “Is this the president we want for our daughters”(“Mirrors”)?
This ad targeted parents and young adults. Parents who watched this felt disgusted at Donald Trump’s degradation of women and may have chosen to vote for Clinton in hopes of shielding their daughters from his vulgarity. Young women relate to this physical insecurity and would be deterred from voting for Trump because of how insensitive he is about female body-image struggles.
I think this ad was effective in educating voters in why they should not vote for Donald Trump. It served to help voters decide the lesser of the two evils, which Scott Dunn and John Tedesco believe was a common theme in 2016: “Since both candidates were largely disliked…it would be a tough sell to convince the public that either candidate was the kind of inspiring leader that would excite voters”(Dunn and Tedesco 102). Clinton instilled fear in her base about having a misogynist for a president.
TV ads played a much larger role in 2008 than in 2016 because online advertising was still new. In contrast to 2016 ads, the ads from 2008 were more informative. While there were attack ads in 2008, “they had been balanced by more positive ads and issue focused ads”(Dunn and Tedesco 101).
DiSalvo 2
ReplyDeleteOne Obama ad was called “Country I Love” and it outlined Obama’s past. He talked about how he grew up in Kansas and was taught American values which motivated his career in public service. He explained how his commitment to his values and love for his country would continue as president. This targeted Americans who doubted Obama was “American” enough to be president. These doubts came to fruition in the form of the Birtherism movement which questioned if Obama was an American citizen. While targeting his doubters, I think the ad was effective for people with mainstream beliefs because Obama was portrayed as a virtuous family man.
In McCain’s ad entitled “Fight” he portrayed himself as a Washington outsider. He distanced himself from the issues in Washington and claimed to be able fix the problems of the past eight years that had threatened citizen’s financial security and savings. His simplistic ad featured him talking about his policy and priorities which I believe was very effective in targeting Republicans dissatisfied with the current administration, but ineffective in targeting people who were not well-versed in policy but preferred to learn about character.
Beckwith, Ryan T. "Watch the 10 most Notabale Campaign Ads of 2016.", 3 November, 2016.
“Country I Love.” YouTube, uploaded by TheDomeCam, 19 June 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aSIW4-YHs8
“Deplorables.” YouTube, uploaded by All Political Ads, 12 Sept. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w85QETPoBic
Dunn, Scott, and John C. Tedesco. "Political Advertising in the 2016 Presidential Election." The 2016 Presidential Campaign. Edited by JR Robert E. Denton. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, 2017.
“Fight.” YouTube, uploaded by CampaignAdCentral, 11 Jan. 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTcq248M62g
"Mirrors." YouTube, uploaded by Hillary Clinton, 23 Sept. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHGPbl-werw.
For this week’s blog, I analyzed the following four political advertisements:
ReplyDeleteTrump: Movement
Clinton: Low Opinion
Bush: Windsurfing
Obama: Country I Love
Starting with Donald Trump’s, his strategy was simple and consistent throughout his campaign. Appeal to the disenfranchised middle-class Americans who wanted a change of pace in Washington: “The purely positive ads the campaign did run were mostly focused on the idea that Trump was leading ‘a movement, not a campaign’,” (Denton 2017). That’s exactly what his advertisement, Movement, was all about. The ad featured shots of working class Americans and their families, and Trump engaging them in conversation. Those shots were paired with majestic aerial shots of factories and manufacturing plants, to further the working-class vibe. All of this combined into his plea for a movement: “What people are realizing now is that Donald Trump was able to use a unique brand identity to get the attention of the media and the people, to respond to a movement in the country,” (Conick 2016).
The advertisement that I chose from Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, was one of many that attempted to show people who the “real” Donald Trump was. She wanted the people to remember that he was not a politician, nor someone who genuinely cared about the middle class: “The overarching theme of the Clinton campaign’s advertising was Trump’s unfitness for office due to his temperament and lack of experience,” (Denton 2017). This ad, in particular, featured a number of clips showing Trump saying hurtful things about individuals, or the American people as a whole. A number of these clips were specifically chosen portions of his rallies, while others came from videos that were recorded before he started his presidential campaign. Regardless of where they came from, the theme was the same throughout. Clinton and her campaign wanted to remind the country, and specifically the middle class, that Trump didn’t truly care for their well-being.
The two other campaign ads I chose are two of the more iconic advertisements in recent history. The first one, Windsurfing from George Bush’s 2004 re-election bid, was first shown to me in high school. This expertly-crafted advertisement features his opponent, John Kerry, windsurfing in the ocean. The video shows him going “wherever the wind blows” as a metaphor for how he flip-flops on different issues. The ad uses humor to convey the point that Bush is trying to make; that Kerry will change his mind on issues at a moment’s notice.
My other choice was Barack Obama’s Country I Love advertisement from 2008. In a somewhat similar fashion to Donald Trump, this ad features Obama talking about his upbringing and his values in order to appeal to working class citizens. The advertisement successfully humanizes Obama and makes him more relatable through pictures and videos from his childhood. That ad makes him seem like an “Average Joe” who’s going to look out for his fellow average citizens when elected.
The difference between advertisements in 2004 and 2016 are palpable. To me, ads in 2016 seemed far more negative than they had been in past years. They also appear to focus less and less on the actual issues, and instead attack the character of whoever the opponent is. Political ads, like the political news cycle, continue to spiral in a negative direction, with no realistic end in sight. As long as people continue to talk about elections at the astronomical rate that they did in 2016, attack ads will continue to be the medium of choice.
Works Cited
DeleteE., Denton Jr Robert. The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Springer International Publishing, 2017.
Conick, Hal. “How Social Media, Microtargeting and Big Data Revolutionized Political Marketing.” AMA, American Marketing Association, 26 Sept. 2016, www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/social-media-big-data-microtargeting-revolutionized-political-marketing.aspx.
The first presidential campaign ad that I looked at was an ad by Hillary Clinton called “mirrors”. Throughout the 2016 presidential election, Clinton released numerous ads that focused all too much on Trump. In Chapter 4 of Denton’s book, he stated that due to the fact that Trump was never really the picture of the “ideal” or “acceptable” candidate, this gave Clinton the chance for her to focus on his character rather than his policy for the rest of the 2016 election. In this specific campaign ad, Hillary Clinton used all of the infamous disrespectful and distasteful remarks that Donald Trump said about woman against him, as a way to target women in general and parents with young kids, specifically young girls. She included clips of him saying things like “I’d look her right in that fat ugly face of hers” and him being asked if he treats women with respect and his response was him laughing saying, “Uh, I can’t say that either”, while young girls criticized themselves in the mirror. Clinton ended her campaign ad with asking the question of “is this the president we want for our daughters?” I would say that this campaign ad was effective and successful because it educated voters on reasons that they should not vote for Trump, although regardless of how successful Clinton’s campaign ads were, they did not help her to win the election.
ReplyDeleteThe second presidential campaign ad that I looked at was Donald Trump’s ad called “dangerous”. Although President Trump didn’t air as many ads as other presidential nominees, he did a good job of getting free publicity from TV, twitter, and his remarks at many rallies. This ad was meant to “hit Clinton on several fronts while featuring of her stumbling after leaving a 9/11 memorial”. This ad targeted voters in general, and raised many questions and concerns about her health, talking about how Hillary Clinton has already failed us as Secretary of State, and how we should not let her fail us again if she were to have become the President of the United States. I believe that this campaign ad was an effective one. Unlike Clinton, Trump usually focused more on why he wanted to make America great again and what he wanted to do, instead of talking about all of the reasons to not vote for Clinton.
Another campaign ad I looked at was Obama’s 2008 campaign called “unravel.” This campaign was known as the most-aired campaign ad of that past decade. The campaign painted the picture of how John McCain’s new health care plan at the time, could cause viewers to potentially lose their health care. I would say that this was an effective campaign being that it aired more than any other commercial about a candidate for office for the past 10 years during that time.
The last campaign ad that I looked at was John McCain’s ad called “fight”. Aiming at the voters, specifically Republicans, McCain positioned himself as if he were an outsider to Washington D.C., and because of that, he believes that he would be the ideal candidate to be able to fix the problems that have been ongoing for the past 8 years such at people’s investments and savings, as well as financial security being jeopardized.
Works Cited:
Denton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Beckwith, Ryan Teague. "Watch the 10 Most Notable Campaign Ads of 2016." Time, 3 Nov. 2016.
Sullivan, S. (2014, April 8). “This is the single most-aired political ad in the last 10 years.” The Washington Post. Retrieved October 1, 2018, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2014/04/08/watch-obama-hit-mccain-in-the-single-most-aired-campaign-ad-of-the-past-decade/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.314b4cd6ed36
Political advertising became more important than ever when the 2016 presidential election happened, due to the notorious nature of the relationship between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, TV ads were very explicit, targeted, and most of the time held nothing back. The first ad I looked at was for Trump. It was the ad that livingroomcandidate.com referred to as “Deplorables”. In this ad, Trump frames the context of a speech Hillary Clinton gave to be interpreted as her calling middle class Americans “deplorables”. This ad is pretty controlled to other jabs at Clinton by Trump, but it is still an attempt to drag her name and associate her as a candidate with the idea that she does not care about “real Americans”, as those individuals were the target audience of the ad. Trump was targeting middle class, potentially blue collar workers, and was trying to create a sense of mistrust amongst them and Clinton. I think this ad was effective, or rather its messaging because Trump supporters are sort of notorious now for thinking Clinton is inherently untruthful and distrustful.
ReplyDeleteThe second ad I looked at was for Clinton in the 2016 election. It was the ad referred to as “Someplace” on livingroomcandidate.com, where Clinton shows clips of Trump on Letterman admitting his clothing line was being made and sold from China and Bangladesh, and that it is not the voice of a man who wants to make America great again. The ad successfully and powerful diminishes Trump big slogan tag line a bit, and for that I think it is successful. Trump often talks about success, however he doesn’t illustrate what success would mean for others in the country and the message delivers that clearly to her supporters. This is successful, because it reaches a target audience of those who might be on the fence regarding their vote. The idea from this ad was to allow people to see the different perceptions of a candidate’s vision.
In 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on the idea that he was the “change we could believe in”, and it won him the presidency. Not only did Obama fundraise historically well to fund his campaign to the presidency, but he also employed some smart ads which helped him secure a good reputation and likeableness. I think originally a lot of people were hesitant towards Obama because he was black and from Hawaii, and with ads like “Country I Love” (livingroomcandidate.com) from 2008, he reiterates his American heritage and upbringing, to allow others to see him as another regular citizen. Additionally, in the ad “Defining Moment”, he blatantly attacks critic’s concerns about employment and the economy, and lays out his plans simply for people’s understanding. He talks about building jobs in America, and overall focusing on developing our infrastructure more. The ad is a bit longer, but more informative and takes the time to eliminate confusion regarding his vision for the country. I believe the target of these two ads were actually people that could have been opposed to Obama. This is because they seek to eliminate concerns surrounding who he is and what he wanted to do at the time. Overall, I think we will see social media campaigning become more prominent in the future, more so than television ads.
References
DeleteDenton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and
Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
“The Living Room Candidate - Commercials - 2016 - America Soaring.” The Living Room
Candidate - Commercials - 1980 - Reagan's Record, www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2016.
The four campaign ads that I am analyzing are Clinton’s “Mirrors” from 2016, Trump’s “Dangerous” from 2016, Johnson's “Daisy” from 1964, and Obama’s “Country I Love” from 2008.
ReplyDeleteI chose this Clinton ad in particular because I feel like it was her most effective one. The majority of ads aired during the 2016 election were negative. I believe that all this bickering between Clinton and Trump caused many undecided voters to stay home on election day. It was too much for the demographic of voters who do not care about politics.
I feel like Clinton’s “Mirrors” ad successfully targeted that audience. She focused on all that she has done for American children while previously in office and tied it together to seem like a positive ad for herself. It had substance other than her usual Trump-bashing ads that did not separate her in the polls. The marketing statistics as told by Denton’s The 2016 US Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice echoed this idea: “Since the two candidates’ advertising strategies were largely similar, it’s virtually impossible to make conclusive judgments about whose strategy was better. It is, however, possible that both campaigns made a misstep by running such negative campaigns. Perhaps if either candidate had run a few more positive ads to give voters an affirmative reason to vote for them rather than trying to convince voters they were the lesser evil, they could have pulled away and won the election convincingly.” (Denton 116). If Clinton launched more ads like this one, then I believe that her public image would not have been so misconstrued by November 2016.
Trump’s “Dangerous” ad perfectly depicts the basis of his campaign: bashing Hillary Clinton’s public image while elevating his own. It covers all the bases that Trump supporters talked about the most: homeland security, foreign affairs, and how “unfit” Clinton was to be president. The funny thing, though, is that Trump did not even use mass media ads all too often. His campaign resided more on social media than television or radio. Trump was able to grab the attention of voters where they spent most of their free time: on social media. His current campaign manager did this so well that he was able to begin targeting certain groups to strengthen Trump’s base. Former political advertising expert for Microsoft Cyrus Krohn reflected on this strategy compared to what he saw in the early 2000s, saying, “’…Mass marketing went away and micro-targeting – nano-targeting – came to fruition.’ Any candidate using Facebook can put a campaign message promising one thing in front of one group of voters while simultaneously running an ad with a completely opposite message in front of a different group of voters.” (Wong 2).
I chose to analyze Lyndon B. Johnson’s famous campaign ad because it is a prime example of how mass media can instill the same thoughts in peoples’ minds. His “Daisy” ad alluded that his opponent, Barry Goldwater, would send America into nuclear warfare if elected. Today it sounds dumb that people believed it, but Americans were legitimately scared of the Cold War at that time. This ad successfully reached out to just about every demographic flawlessly.
Finally, I felt that Obama’s 2008 ad was perfect for his campaign. He set himself up as someone who used American values to surpass his hardships and elevate him to that point in his life. This is a very good example of a positive ad because his opponent, John McCain, was not even mentioned in it. I feel like this ad effectively reached out to traditionalists and undecided voters.
Works Cited
DeleteBeckwith, Ryan Teague. “Campaign Ads: Watch the Most Notable Ads of 2016.” Time, Time, 3 Nov. 2016, time.com/4556441/campaign-ads-2016-notable-video/.
“(High Quality) Famous ‘Daisy’ Attack Ad from 1964 Presidential Election.” YouTube, YouTube, 30 Oct. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDTBnsqxZ3k.
“The Living Room Candidate - Commercials - 2008 - Country I Love.” The Living Room Candidate - Commercials - 1980 - Reagan's Record, www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2008.
Wong, Julia Carrie. “'It Might Work Too Well': the Dark Art of Political Advertising Online.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy.
E., Denton Jr Robert. The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Springer International Publishing, 2017.
Sophia Toppo
ReplyDeleteBlog 5
The first Presidential campaign ad I looked at that really resonated with me was Hillary Clintons “Mirrors” ad. This ad featured a variety of young girls and teenagers looking at themselves in the mirror while a voice over of Trump was in the background. The voice over of Trump was him making horrible statements about women that were demeaning and just flat out disgusting. The overall message of the ad was a jab at Trump and his overall character. The ad stated towards the end “Is this the President we want for our daughters?” Hillary is aiming to reach out to the audience by saying that Trump is not the right role model for our children as president. According to The 2016 US Presidential Campaign, “This focus on character rather than policy would set the tone for Clinton’s advertising throughout the rest of the election”(Denton 104). This theme of focusing on Trump’s character was presented in another campaign ad that targeted another audience. While the first ad was aimed towards parents with daughters, her other ads reach out to a much wider audience as well. This was a successful strategy for her because the ads that were most popular in her campaign involved her using Trumps own words against him.
A Trump campaign ad that was a jab at Hillary was his ad “Unfit.” This ad described all of her lie cover-ups and scandals and how she is unfit to serve. This was a very common strategy Trump used through out his campaign to prove that Hillary was involved in corrupt activities. According to The 2016 US Presidential Campaign, “…positive ads were rare and largely tangential to the campaigns overall advertising strategy, which was overwhelmingly focused on denigrating Clinton”(Denton 110). A majority of his ads were definitely there to attack Clinton and how she would be dangerous to America. These ads could be effective to the people who support Trump and are really against Hillary.
I also focused on Obama’s former campaign ads from his 2012 campaign. I noticed a lot of his ads were the same format where he spoke directly into a camera about his policies. His ad “The choice” compared his presidential policies to his opponent Mitt Romney and how people have the choice between two presidents who have different plans for the country. I thought this was a very affective ad because Obama was very advanced in his marketing strategies during his campaign. According to an article I marketing news, “Obama’s campaigns used the latest in marketing technology”(Conick 1). These strategies are mostly likely what brought him success I the two campaigns he participated in.
DeleteThe last campaign ad I focused on was Mitt Romney’s ad, “Find a way.” This was a very similar strategy to Trump and Hilary where the ad is comparative and judges the policies and character of their opponent. He talks about how Obama did nothing for the economy and Romney has done so much for just Massachusetts in the same amount of time. Although Mitt Romney was not successful in winning the election this campaign ad could have been successful in reaching out to his supporters.
Conick, Hal. "How Social Media, Microtargeting and Big Data Revolutionized Political Marketing." Market Week, 26 Sept. 2016.
Denton, Robert E. The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Switzerland, Springer International Publishing, 2017.
Lindsey Guadagni
ReplyDeleteAttack ads are negative ads meant to attack, a statement not true or exaggerated. In mitt Romneys attack ad against Barack Obama “Obama attacks success” he exclaims that Obama targets successful people with business and attacks them. Now clearly this is exaggerated, but the video shows a man who talks about how he built a family business and how Obama is demonizing his success. This attack ad was targeted for people with businesses to scare them away from voting for Obama. Honestly, I'm not sure how successful this ad could be or was, but I personally do not believe the exaggeration of this ad. At the end of the ad, Mitt Romney states “President Obama attacks success and therefore under President Obama we have less success.” This was the perfect example of an attack ad. Another type of ads are Character ads are used to convey what type of person candidate is. During the 2016 election candidate, Donald Trump released an ad about Hilary Clinton called “deplorable”. In this ad, the phrase "Basket of deplorables" is a phrase from a 2016 presidential election campaign speech delivered by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on September 9, 2016, at a campaign fundraising event, which Clinton used to describe half of the supporters of her general election opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump. Then in the ad Hilary proceeds to insult Donald Trump. The ad ended with “Hilary Clinton viciously demonizing hard working people”. In this ad, Donald Trump tries to make people think that Hilary Clinton's character is insincere. Trump attacks her character and tries to make it seem like she does not care about Americans and the hard working people of America. The target audience is the “hard-working” people of America. I feel this ad was effective because it had a direct quote from Hilary Clinton herself. The third type of ad is Fear ads are used as a scare tactic; hoping to persuade voters to vote for a candidate because something bad might happen. In the 2016 presidential election of candidate Donald Trump vs Hilary Clinton used a common technique in political ads. This technique is to use your opponent’s words against them. In Hilary Clintons fear ad called “Mirrors” she created a fear of our president making Women feel insecure about themselves, especially young Women. This ad personally made an impact on me because I feel like young Women growing up are sensitive and vulnerable as it is especially in today’s day in age so I felt that candidate Hilary Clinton really targeted that feeling of insecurity in young women during this ad. Clinton’s team used an innovative technique of showing people watching Trump instead, as in this powerful ad of young girls listening to Trump’s words about women. I feel this ad was completely effective because parents of daughters specifically will see it and disapprove of Donald Trump because of the bad role model this proves. The target audience was people with daughters and women in this ad. The fourth type of ad is the Plain folk ad is putting it into language that everyone would understand and trying very hard to relate to the average American. In Mitt Romneys Presidental ad “American Family” he tries to convey a message that he is a “plain folk”. In this ad, he talks about how he is a family man and the opening line is “The future of this country is more affected by the work that goes on in the four walls of the home than anything else.” He talks about faith and love of country and how to teach that to your kids. This ad shows that he is a father and a family man just like many Americans which proves my point of Mitt Romney trying to convey the message that he is an average American family man or a “plain folk”.
References/Citations:
Delete“Obama Attacks Success” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QSIIzbYRdo
“Mirrors” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHGPbl-werw
“Deplorables.” YouTube, uploaded by All Political Ads, 12 Sept. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w85QETPoBic
“American Family” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOuizLehD2k
Denton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and
Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
“The Living Room Candidate - Commercials - 2016 - America Soaring.” The Living Room
Candidate - Commercials - 1980 - Reagan's Record, www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2016.
Advertising during Presidential campaigns is a crucial part of the election. With many different media outlets, getting your message out on numerous platforms can help your message reach many demographics. In “The 2016 Presidential Campaign” Robert Denton says “Prior to candidate web pages and candidate social media accounts, televised political advertisements presented a rare form of communication that allowed candidates to create messages in a distilled form, free from journalistic gatekeeping, framing, or interpretation (Denton, 99). The tricky side to televised campaigns is that they provide low information voters with quick information that often sways them one way or another. According to Julia Wong from the Guardian, “Any candidate using Facebook can put a campaign message promising one thing in front of one group of voters while simultaneously running an ad with a completely opposite message in front of a different group of voters. The ads themselves are not posted anywhere for the general public to see (this is what’s known as “dark advertising”), and chances are, no one will ever be the wiser) (Wong). Social media can be a sneaky tool because it can allow certain messages to get in front of certain people. This can be very helpful when trying to reach a specific demographic. The ad I chose to analyze for Hillary Clinton was her ad called “mirrors”. In this ad, it shows many different young girls looking at themselves in the mirror with clips of Trump speaking negatively about women in the background. He says things like “she’s a slob” “she ate like a pig” and “a person who is flat chested is very hard to be a 10”. The ad ends with the words “Is this the president we want for our daughters?” written across the screen. I personally feel this ad is extremely powerful. The words Donald Trump uses rude towards women and also are not characteristics of how presidents normally act. The ad reaches many middle aged parents who have daughters. This ad showed girls from many different ethnic backgrounds, which shows that race and ethnicity is not a factor when it comes to females as a whole. A big part of why women did not vote for Trump was because of his disrespectful comments towards women.
ReplyDeleteThe ad titled “Dangerous” by Donald Trump shows many clips of Hillary Clinton that may show she is not entirely fit to be president. For example, there are clips of her needing assistance walking up stairs, coughing a lot and with her sunglasses on looking at her phone screen. This is a strong marketing tactic by Donald Trump. The targeted audience was probably current democrats since he was trying to show she is not healthy or suited to be president due to her past mistakes. I feel like this was powerful and effective because Hillary’s health was a huge question during the election. In 2012, Barack Obama’s created a campaign ad called “Romney is the Problem, Not the Solution”. The ad plays Mitt Romney singing “America the Beautiful” with a bunch of statements regarding Mitt Romney shipping jobs out of the country, ending with the statement “Mitt Romney is the not the solution, he’s the problem”. This ad targets families who are concerned about the job market and taxes. It’s effective because it plays the clip of him singing to show his “pride for his country” although the statements show he is not doing what’s best for the country. Mitt Romney released the ad “Find a Way” during the 2012 presidential election. It starts with America’s view on the current presidential status, saying we have higher deficits and chronic unemployment. It then says “He (Obama) says he’s only had 4 years”. This is when Mitt Romney explains all of his accomplishments in the past 4 years like cutting unemployment and during the deficit into a rainy day fund. The target audience is possibly current low information voters or democrats. It is effective because it explains what he has done while not even being president. The music also changes from a somber tune to a happier tune when it starts talking about Mitt Romney.
ReplyDeleteWorks Cited:
Denton Jr., Robert E., ed. The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.
Wong, Julia Carrie. "'It might work too well' - The dark art of political advertising online." The Guardian, 22 March 2018.
Bryan Proctor
ReplyDeleteIn recent elections politicians have taken on new forms of advertising and political campaigning strategies. In the 2016 election comparative ads were used more than ever before. One of Donald Trumps comparative ads that ran was called Two America’s: Immigration. Here he compares what his America would look like if he were elected to what Clinton’s America would look like. In this ad Trump is targeting an audience that is concerned about borders and immigration (white males) but also his base supporters. He painted Clinton’s presidential portrait in a dark light and highlighted how great things would be under him. I think for the type of demographic that Trump was trying to reach he was largely successful.
One interesting strategy that Clinton employed in her campaign ads was using Trump’s own words against him. In her ad Mirrors she uses some of Trump’s disgraceful descriptions and comments about women “The final tagline reads, ‘Is this the president we want for our daughters?’ As with the previous ad, the clear message was that Trump’s temperament should make him unacceptable to certain group of voters (in this case, parents with daughter),” (Denton 105). Here, as described in the passage, Clinton is targeting parents with daughters, women, and perhaps feminists. I think its successful because is calls on a specific group of people’s needs in a time where there interests may not be addressed. It makes her appear better than her opponent when it comes to equality and respect.
Barack Obama was the president to really amp up political advertising, especially through social media and television. “If you go back to 2012, for example, Obama won the popular vote by about a 3% margin, but he won the Electoral College vote by a 30% margin. … How did that happen? It happened because they used microtargeting and Big Data to send selected targeted messages the way we do in the marketing of any product or any service,” (Conick 2). One effective ad that Obama ran in 2012 was called Determination where it seems like he is directly targeting middle class, and swing voters. He talks about rising job and employment rates, he mention exports (the middle class are victims of globalization) the types of issues that directly relate to the average middle class constituent. In this ad he may have successfully convinced people on the edge to vote for him. He is effectively showing people that things are going well under his leadership.
In Mitt Romney’s Believe In America ad he says he’s going to make the government smaller and simpler. He is directing this message to republicans and people who prefer small government. Romney also says he wants to cut Obama Care and make America a job creating machine. These messages seem directed to voters that are resentful of Obamas policies and voters who feel that they have lost their job under poor leadership. I think it is effective because it tells voters some of his broad goals and addresses large population’s needs and interests.
Works Cited
Conick, Hal. "How Social Media, Microtargeting and Big Data Revolutionized Political Marketing." Market Week, 26 Sept. 2016.
Denton Jr., Robert E., ed. The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.
After looking at campaign ads from the election in 2012 and 2016, the only real difference I saw was in Obama’s ad. Overall, Romney, Clinton and Trump all negatively targeted their opponents while Obama had more of a friendlier approach. Yes, Obama did have ads that were targeted mostly on Romney, but the one I chose was simply brilliant.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, Bruce Newman wrote a book that explained “Obama’s Method” that was all about how ads can connect to the audience. Basically, the method included “creating a unique brand identity, coming up with a winning advertising strategy, developing a relationship with your customer and being able to act in a crisis” (Newman). For the commercial that I chose, Obama blew his own method out of the park. He got Will Ferrell to act in his comedic way to tell the audience to go vote. At the end of the commercial, Ferrell said to vote for Obama in order to show that he was on his side. I loved this because Obama hooked people into the commercial by getting a huge name in hollywood while also including humor. Although I do not know what demographic this really was pointed at, I do think it had something to do with the higher class. Most republicans are in the higher class in society, so I think including Will Ferrell showed this demographic that “higher” people do want Obama, as well. This really was an effective advertisement because Obama used humor instead of negativity which we don’t usually see in presidential campaigns.
As for Mitt Romney’s commercial, he completely targeted Obama. The commercial focused on our troops and how allowing Obama into office will take away a huge amount of money from the troops. Because Romney focused on our military, this was definitely his demographic. He wanted to persuade the people involved in the military, or who has family/friends in the military, that Obama is not a good fit for president. In my opinion, I do not think this was really effective because there were no real facts. The entire commercial was someone speaking about what Obama would do to our troops. Yes, there was an emotional effect, but there was nothing there to grab the audience’s attention.
In the 2016 presidential campaign, President Trump came out with a commercial that destroyed Clinton. This commercial showed an actress, that played Clinton, breaking technology with hammers. While she was breaking the technology, Clinton’s voice was in the background explaining how she was very trusted. Overall, it was an obvious ironic commercial, targeted at Clinton, that was only shown in the swing states. Having the swing states be the demographic was helpful because it allowed the states that needed to see it, a humorous commercial that was negative about Clinton. In my opinion, I do not think it was effective because it looked like a skit from Saturday Night Live. This is because there was too much humor in it that it didn’t make sense. “The campaigns seemed to assume that there was little need to build up their own candidates when they could denigrate the opposing candidate so thoroughly that voters would find him or her to be completely unacceptable” (Denton 103). I agree with this because Trump’s commercial were really all about how Clinton was not fit for presidency. Yes, I do think this happens in every election, but Clinton and Trump took it further.
On the other hand, Clinton made a commercial that showed clips of Trump degrading women. The entire commercial was different clips of Trump’s actions and statements that were made against women. Also, the commercial had an emotional appeal to it because of the colors used and the music in the background. The way that the Clinton campaign made this commercial was really effective because it showed actual footage of Trump. There were no lies in this commercial because everything showed proof of Trump. This is the difference between Trump and Clinton’s commercials because Trump did not use legit proof of Clinton while Clinton’s advertisements were all physical evidence of Trump. Also, this commercial was shown in the swing states. This demographic was perfect because the states that could vote either way could see how Trump really acts.
DeleteOverall, I do not see many differences in these advertisements because they all were trying to degrade their opponent besides Obama. Yes, there were definitely commercials from Obama that negatively spoke about Romney, but I think Obama using a prominent person in his commercial gave him a better look. In other words, instead of being negative, Obama came out on the top by using humor instead of “attacking” Romney.
Works Cited
“What He Believes I Hillary Clinton.” YouTube, Hillary Clinton. Posted on 1 November 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oy8HRdlLGCQ
“The Clinton Way.” YouTube, Future45. Posted on 3 November 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY0jgDvIMog
“Campaign 2012.” Political Communication Lab. https://pcl.stanford.edu/campaigns/2012/
Conick, Hal. “How Social Media, Microtargeting and Big Data Revolutionized Political
Marketing.” American Marketing Association. 26 September 2016.
https://www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/social-media-big-data-microtargeting-revolutionized-political-marketing.aspx. Accessed on 1 October 2018.
I found the 2016 advertisements to be especially negative and pointed. There was no room to have positive feelings for both candidates because they were so opposite and so all-consuming. Their advertisements reflected this. Hillary Clinton’s ads focused on using Trump’s words and actions against him. There are two examples of this that are so riveting to me that it was difficult to choose one. In one advertisement, Trump is spewing a slew of misogynistic, heinous phrases while the audience receives a visual of young girls (I would say all of them are either about to or are going through puberty and are in a time in their lives where they are creating their self esteem and confidence.) analyzing themselves in mirrors. It appears as if they are searching their faces for something that Trump’s America would deem acceptable gathering than embracing who they are. Trump’s America is brought into question in Clinton’s second advertisement: The father of a Muslim-American soldier who sacrificed his life to keep others safe wonders if his son would have been welcomed due to his ethnicity and appearance (Beckwith). These advertisements were pointed at minorities and women - the people who Trump alienates with his hateful language, but these groups did not need to hear it all over again. These target audiences solely needed someone to rally for them and give them something hopeful to look towards. Unfortunately, Obama took that slogan for his own campaign…
ReplyDeleteTrump also geared his advertisements toward crude messages of his opponent. In all of this mudslinging, Trump chose to tackle Hillary Clinton’s health. There were multiple cuts of Clinton falling, coughing and fainting while the voice over stated how terribly she executed her role as secretary of state (Beckwith). The rest of Trump’s brand was along the same strain. He mocked the disabled, made a joke of sexual assault and harassment, accused brown and black minorities of being rapists and criminals, and overall did not give a thought to the damage he might cause to anyone who did not meet his criteria. “To some, these efforts may not seem dignified, but being dignified might not move the political merchandise these days” (Denton). Donald Trump’s lack of empathy and crudeness was incredibly shocking to many people, but white, middle class voters found a homeyness in it. This feeling has always made me think of how the townspeople in Hamilton felt that they could grab a beer with Aaron Burr and did not care that he did not have positions on any issues.
Watching an Obama advertisement from 2012 felt like I went into a time vortex. The commercial is all about what he has done for the economy and he cannot wait to do more. It is not flashy or striking the way that advertisements were in 2016 (Barack Obama). The audience this advertisement was pointed to was the shrinking middle class. The focus for politicians was politics and that was it. Mitt Romney’s advertisement follows the same trend in his “Find A Way” commercial. The thirty second spot praises Romney for how quickly he was able to right the deficit in Massachusetts in the same amount of time that Obama made it worse. There was an attack here, but it was on Obama’s political actions; not on his appearance, health or any other irrelevant feature (Mitt Romney). The target audience for this advertisement would have been white, middle class Americans because they were a group that was unhappy with unemployment rates and the economy.
Works Cited
Beckwith, Ryan Teague. “Campaign Ads: Watch the Most Notable Ads of 2016.” Time, Time, 3 Nov. 2016, time.com/4556441/campaign-ads-2016-notable-video/.
Denton, Robert E. J., and ProQuest Ebooks. The 2016 US Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, Secaucus;New York;, 2017, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-52599-0.
Mitt Romney. “Find A Way.” YouTube, Wall Street Journal, 22 Oct. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2YvKdMchp0.
Barack Obama. “Go.” YouTube, BarackObamadotcom, 7 May 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0OVngTHkNg.
Kevin Slattery
ReplyDeleteProfessor Lisa Burns
Strategic Political Communication in the Trump Era
2 October 2018
Blog Post #5
The ads run by Democrats and Republicans during presidential campaigns have vastly different viewpoints from one another. An ad run by Donald Trump and the Republican party is called “Two Americas: Immigration”. The ad was disjointed as it stated the system is rigged against ordinary Americans and then attacked Hillary Clinton’s viewpoints on immigration. The ad said Hillary Clinton’s America would not be secure because of an overflow of refugees from Syria and illegal immigrants who would skim off the top such as taking social security benefits from other Americans. The targeted audience in the ad appeared to be Americans who are fearful of refugees and immigrants as well as Americans who feel disenfranchised with the then-current political system. The ad then discusses how Donald Trump will help make America safe. I do remember seeing this ad during the election season of 2016. I remember seeing the ad on Instagram and YouTube. This ad effectively encompassed social media and micro targeting certain audiences, which is a recommended approach for marketers to adapt (Conick 1). Another ad from 2016 presidential election was an ad by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party called “Someplace”. The ad is a part of an interview that took place years ago with Donald Trump and David Letterman. In the interview, Letterman asked Trump where his suits and ties were made. Trump responded by saying they were made in Bangladesh and China while giving a smirk. The ad then says that Trump outsourced 12 million American jobs to foreign countries. This Clinton ad targets Americans who are concerned about losing their jobs to outsourcing. It also counters the narrative that Trump has the best interests of the American worker at hand. Both campaigns were mostly negative to each other, which represents a change from recent presidential elections (Denton 101). Research suggests negative campaign advertising helps candidates, which would explain the increase in negative advertising for presidential candidates (Denton 102).
There have been several other effective ads by both parties that have taken place before the 2016 Election. Going back to the 2012 Election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, then-President Obama ran a very effective ad against candidate Mitt Romney. The ad, which was similar to the Hillary Clinton ad about Trump, critiqued Romney’s record against China. The ad detailed how Romney had invested in companies that specialized in outsourcing American jobs overseas. Again, this ad bashed the notion that a Republican candidate was looking out for working class Americans. The ad clearly targeted working class Americans in an attempt to win them over and support President Obama. Another ad by Mitt Romney talked about the loss of manufacturing jobs in America under the Obama Presidency. The ad detailed how Chinese manufacturing had outpaced American manufacturing during Obama’s tenure. This ad depicted Obama as a detractor of American manufacturing while portraying Romney as a helper of American manufacturing.
Works Cited
Conick, Hal. “How Social Media, Microtargeting, and Big Data Revolutionized Political Marketing.” Marketing News, Marketing News, 26 Sept. 2018, www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/social-media-big-data-microtargeting-revolutionized-political-marketing.aspx.
Denton, Robert E. The 2016 Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
The first ad that I viewed was a Trump ad. I could not get Living Room Candidate so I took to YouTube and chose the first official Trump campaign commercial I could find and within seconds, Trump was essentially bashing Democrats as a whole, calling them corrupt and failures. He does not say her name but he shows pictures of Hillary Clinton during the words “failed and corrupt” when describing the previous organizations in office also in reference to Obama. Trump was not really promoting himself but bashing his opposition. Nothing new here from Trump. It would appear that his target audience here were Republicans and or people who are fed up with the current governmental establishment. “Like the Clinton campaign, Trump used a lot of comparative advertising in order to attack Clinton without as much risk” (Denton 2017). Clinton’s commercial was also an attack on Trump. It was executed a bit differently. Using shots of children watching Trump say some things I’m sure he regrets saying. The title of this commercial was called Role Models, and granted I am neither a Trump supporter nor a Clinton supporter, in terms of effectiveness I have to say that Clinton had the upper hand when comparing the two commercials. While Trump may have talked about serious issues with the democratic organizations in the past, Clinton used Trump’s dialogue and footage of him saying some unsavory things. Watching the children hear these things just struck me a bit stronger than Trump’s commercial. I then went back and looked up a campaign commercial from the 2012 campaign from Obama, and the tone was entirely different. While it may vary slightly as Obama was running for re-election, there was no attacks on the other candidate, but minor critiques in Romney’s policies. Obama then went on to talk about his plan if he were to be re-elected. This commercial varied greatly from those we saw in the 2016 election. It was less aggressive, and felt a lot more genuine and centered around politics. It felt like Obama truly wanted to win the election so he could bring change, not just so he could say that he beat the other candidate. While the video was quite long it was fairly effective. The last video I watches was a Romney commercial from 2012, and this one picked out the issues Obama had, but Romney mentions those failures to show how he has strengths in those areas, unlike how Trump and Clinton just claw away at each other while we were force to pick the lesser of two evils in a sense. The tone from the 2012 videos seemed to be a lot more genuine, and personally how I would prefer to see political ads from the upcoming election in 2020.
ReplyDeleteDenton, Robert E. The 2016 Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.
Blog #5
ReplyDeleteCampaign ads throughout the 2016 presidential election were nothing short of amusing. Donald Trump used most of his time on social media and television to bad mouth Hillary Clinton. Although Hillary took some jabs back at than-candidate Trump, she predominantly focused on her target audience and securing their vote.
Hilary Clinton’s 2016 campaign slogan was “I’m with her,” which was specifically targeted towards her base. This slogan and Hillary were just mere safe havens compared to Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again.’ Donald was clearly targeting a more disgruntled group of people for his target audience. People who used to think America was great, and want to bring those times back to the present.
Social media played a huge role throughout the campaigning process. Hillary Clinton set up her personal profile in the format of a LinkedIn page, while on the other hand, Donald Trump proved that he would say or tweet just about anything in order to communicate properly with his base. The article entitled ‘It might work too well’ states, “Campaigning in Italy’s recent election, which saw the rise of anti-establishment parties, including the populist Five Star Movement and the far-right league, largely took place on social media.” It was evident that the campaigning methods used throughout the 2016 US presidential election had shaped the way that politicians market themselves worldwide.
John Mccain and President Barack Obama’s ads throughout their presidential campaign in 2008 were unique in their own right, but had some similarities. For example, John Mccain ran on a ‘country first’ mentality, meanwhile, Obama wanted to bring about change. Mccain criticized Obama and his work experience. Claiming that Obama was more of a celebrity and not as much of a president. Regardless of how John Mccain painted Obama to the media, Obama wanted his base to know that he was ready to bring about a necessary change. I believe that Obama and Trump came out victorious because they were candidates who spoke of change in Washington D.C.
In Chapter four of Robert E. Denton’s, ‘The 2016 US Presidential Campaign’ he stated, “Even though candidate web pages and social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, offer campaigns additional forms of candidate-controlled messages, evidence of the importance of political advertising remains.” This quote is simply explaining the principle that even if a candidate has a good online presence, they still need to take accountability for the controlled advertising on the campaign trail.
These four candidates chose to brand themselves differently while running for office because they are all unique to their own goals and aspirations. Each candidate had to pick a specific lane, and then stay in it throughout the campaign. Relentlessly putting pressure on the contender, while making themselves look promising through social media and targeted advertisements.
Works Cited
Denton , Robert. “The 2016 US Presidential Campaign - Political Communication and Practice | ROBERT E. DENTON | Palgrave Macmillan.” R. Markwick | Palgrave Macmillan, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2017, www.palgrave.com/us/book/9783319525983.
Wong, Julia Carrie. “'It Might Work Too Well': the Dark Art of Political Advertising Online.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy.
In my lifetime I have never personally seen a presidential campaign loaded with as much vitriol and division as the 2016 presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The two candidates primarily used to ads to attack the political rhetoric of the other. One Trump’s campaign ads depicts the dystopian future of the Clinton administration compared to his own. Trump, like in his rallies, spends ad time appealing to the baser and more irrational fears of his audience, like immigration. Many of Clinton’s ads spend time attacking or delegitimizing the notions put forth in Trump’s ads. In particular, it seems like one of Clinton’s main strategies were to attack Trump by using his own rhetoric against him, like in her Mirrors ad. The ad depicts teenage girls, a demographic plagued with feelings of inadequacy, self-comparison and doubt, as they evaluate themselves in a mirror. Trumps’ various comments about women are played in the background to serve as grim juxtaposition to the looks of the girls. Here, Clinton means to target one of her most important demographics: women, especially young women. Other Clinton ads feature a similar type of social commentary within them.
ReplyDeleteOverall, these ads would have been effective against anyone but his base, which is ultimately why they failed. Clinton’s ads spent time trying to dissuade the competency of Trump and the immorality of his positions. As Denton writes, “the overarching theme of the Clinton campaigns advertising was Trump’s unfitness for office due to his temperament and lack of experience”(Denton). However, this caveat of Trump is exactly why he garnered so much support. Trump campaigned on himself not being a member of the swamp he seeks to drain, and Hillary Clinton has long been the symbol that swamp. Donald Trump’s voters like him for the exact reasons that the Clinton ads detested. It fits into the larger narrative of Democratic strategy of unbridled civility and “going high”. Donald Trump’s fervent populism proved too much to be stymied by any messages Clinton’s ads carried – most voters had their mind made and Clinton, instead of aiming for Trump’s extreme stupidity, tried to compromise his morality, which is obviously something neither him nor his voters were preoccupied with. Donald Trump spent the most time riling up his own constituency and opening up communication with them through avenues like Twitter, though Clinton always seemed alien, removed, and hard to reach. As Hal Conick writes in Marketing News, “Another big change we saw – and this is how the title of the book reflects what’s happening now – is the ability of the candidate to go directly to the voter in no different way than Amazon has gone directly to the book customer and in no different way than Uber has gone directly to the person who wants transportation”(Connick).
Denton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
DeleteConick, Hal. "How Social Media, Microtargeting and Big Data Revolutionized Political Marketing." Market Week, 26 Sept. 2016.
Rick Lessard
ReplyDeleteAds used:
1) Trump: Deplorables
2) Clinton: Role Model
3) Obama 2012: Cheaters
4) Romney 2012: Give me a break.
5) http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/2016
Campaign ads have been used as a tool by candidates to not only discourage and sway opposing candidate voters but also galvanize their own base of followers. The campaign ad has really evolved in the last twenty years with the rise of the internet, which helped expose candidates and their policies to even larger crowds. As Julie Carrie Wong wrote, “The Vallone ads contained rudimentary versions of many of the attributes that make digital advertising such a powerful – and terrifying – force today: the ability to target specific audiences with tailored messages, then track their reaction.” (Wong) With each candidate, there was a varying degree of success at targeting this audience, with Donald Trump’s camp coming clearly out on top.
In 2012, President Obama was seeking reelection. Though Obama and even Romney were not as overall negative as the 2016 election, each candidate had a good share of negatives adds against one another. In ad “Cheaters” that was from Obama’s camp, the strategy was to use Romney’s words against him and show that Mitt Romney himself was a cheater. The ad was a focused at the economy which was more important during this election than it had been in years past due to Great Recession of 2008. Obama’s camp is focusing on the working class of America by showing that Romney has a lot of money invested in China and will continue to let China walk all over him to protect his interests. At the time the ad was made, I believe this ad was somewhat effective. Obama’s campaign team could have really driven home that Romney wants to keep giving jobs to China.
Rick Lessard
DeleteOne of Romney’s responses to the democrats trying to discredit him was to discredit Obama’s campaign team attempted to muster voters through the use of Bill Clinton. In way Obama’s team was trying to win more support by showing that Bill Clinton supports him. Republicans jumped on this and used Clinton’s own words to show his disbelief in the president. This ad was effective because it not only discredited Obama but it also discredited Clinton.
In the 2016 campaign there was so much mud slinging from both sides, people who weren’t staunch supporters, were not sure who should get their vote. “While loyal supporters of each candidate surely found plenty to like, more ambivalent voters would have had a hard time discerning any compelling reason to vote for either candidate based of the campaign advertising…” (Denton) One can look at both Clinton’s “Role Models” ad and Trump’s “Deplorables” ad to see why this rings true. Both advertisements are extremely effective in sending their message. They both vilify the opposing candidate as someone who is full of hate by using that particular candidate’s own words against them.
The difference is the target audience of each advertisement. Clinton’s ad targets parents on both sides of the political spectrum. It is Clinton’s team’s way in trying to appeal to families and their protective senses. On the other side, Trump’s campaign is galvanizing his base by showing that Hillary Clinton is an elitist. It is extremely effective because it also goes after the swing voter and anyone else who ever doubted Hillary.
Works Cited
Wong, Julia Carrie. “'It Might Work Too Well': the Dark Art of Political Advertising Online.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy.
E., Denton Jr Robert. The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Springer International Publishing, 2017.
2016 was an interesting year for presidential campaign ads. In a cut throat race with two controversial candidates, campaigns ads could make or break the campaign. One of the most interesting yet polarizing ads from the Trump campaign is one called “Dangerous”, highlighting the rising threat of terrorists and their impact on the world. The ad says that “Hillary Clinton failed every single time as Secretary of State”, and that she “doesn’t have the fortitude, strength, or stamina to lead in our world. The ad really banks on the fact of the actions of terror organizations over the years of her tenure as secretary of state, alluding probably to the Benghazi incident. Ironically, this is coming from a man that has never served in an elected position or public office before so the viewer doesn’t have much of a gauge on how he would deal with foreign affairs. This ad is targeted at people invested in foreign affairs because it directly concerns that of our military overseas and staunch Trump supporters, as it directly bashes Clinton’s credibility as a leader as well as her past experience. Another ad from the 2016 campaign that really hit home for viewers was from the Clinton campaign called “War Hero”. The ad opens with TV coverage of Donald Trump bashing Senator John McCain on whether or not he is a war hero. Trump says McCain is only considered a hero because he was a POW and was captured. The scene then changes to Joel Sollender, an Army POW who was captured by the Nazis in 1944. He tells the audience of the conditions he was in while being a POW. The most striking part of the ad comes from Sollender himself, saying that Donald Trump not only insulted POW’s with his comments about McCain, but “insulted all of our military”. The ad is targeting veterans and military personnel, and does an extremely good job at doing so. The ad depicts Trump as someone who doesn’t really seem to care about our veterans due to his comments.
ReplyDeleteWinding back the clocks to 2012, the Obama-Romney battle was a much different ballgame per say. In this race, we had an incumbent president running against an experienced politician. In an ad by Mitt Romney titled “Obama does not earn your vote”, which opens on people who voted for Obama in 2008, but have much different opinions in this election cycle. The voters go on to list the issues that Obama has not solved since 2008, and end with “Obama has not earned to reelection in 2012”. The ad was targeted at undecided voters in the 2012 election, and was effective on delivering this message. The ad shows that even an experienced politician with a presidential term already under his belt still can’t keep every promise he makes. On the other hand, in an ad from Obama titled “Romney is the Problem, Not the Solution”, the ad has Mitt Romney singing the national anthem as the scene changes from empty warehouse to warehouse, with ongoing stats of how Romney has outsourced jobs overseas. The ad’s target audience are blue collar workers because it effects their livelihoods the most. Other than the fact that Obama won the 2012 election, I believe the ad was extremely effective due to the severity of the loss of American jobs.
^John McMahon Works Cited
ReplyDeleteBeckwith, Ryan Teague. “Campaign Ads: Watch the Most Notable Ads of 2016.” Time, Time, 3 Nov. 2016, time.com/4556441/campaign-ads-2016-notable-video/.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evZHwQT8eyk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bguruRep8MM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaxNEzA3jRs
One of the most notable Trump campaign ad’s I watched was “Donald Trump’s Argument for America.” This ad is meant to appeal to the 30-50 age range that has been upset with the corruption in politics and had been seeking real political change. To that group, Trump promises he will make that change. Trump shows himself as the political outsider that he often prided himself on, in this ad, saying that he is running to clean up the government and the way America operates and he is not doing that for himself, he is doing that for the American citizens seeking change.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most notable Clinton ad I watched was “Mirrors.” In the book “The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice,” by Robert Denton, the ads of the 2016 election were analyzed and a common theme in many of Clinton’s ads was using Trump’s words against him. In “Mirrors “this strategy is prevalent as there are girls of all ages hearing the words Trump has said in the past, on the campaign trail, etc. while looking at themselves in the mirror. The words clearly affect all women and young girls and as they look at themselves they clearly look uncomfortable. Denton said, “the clear message was that Trump’s temperament should make him unacceptable to a certain group of voters (in this case, parents with daughters),” (Denton 105). The slide clip of the ad has the words on it “is this the president we want for our daughters?”
Two ads that really stuck out to me from past years was George H.W. Bush’s “Willie Horton” attack ad which described a situation in which his opponent, Dukakis, has given people a free weekend from jail time. One criminal in particular, Willie Horton who killed a boy in a robbery stabbing him 19 times. Horton got free weekend passes in during those passes he supposedly kidnapped a couple, stabbed the man and raped the woman. This attack ad showed Dukakis incredibly soft on crime while Bush supports the death penalty. This ad appeals to parents who have young children and adults who fear criminals. The second is the infamous “Daisy” ad in which a little girl is counting petals on a flower and then the camera zooms into her pupil and there are nuclear weapons exploding. The narrator explained that this could be a reality if you do not vote for Lyndon B Johnson. This ad appeals to most people—as many feared nuclear weapons especially in this time with the cold war as well as parents with young children.
Ads have dominated the political campaign world, especially attack ads and I think this will be interesting to see how this is all translated into this new social media trend in advertisements in the 2020 election. I found the article “'It might work too well' - The dark art of political advertising online” by Julia Wong incredibly interesting. Those who first suggested using the internet as an advertisement resource knew it had potential danger—and look where we are now. I think with all the social media targeting that has come out regarding Trumps strategy in the 2016 election it is going to be interesting to see how other candidates use these things to their advantage in 2020. Wong explained that Trump’s digital media director, “Parscale claims he typically ran 50,000 to 60,000 variations of Facebook ads each day during the Trump campaign, all targeting different segments of the electorate.” This clearly had an effect on the results of the 2016 campaign, but with so many candidates likely to tap into this previously untapped strategy will it bear the same sort of results? I am very interested to find out.
DeleteWorks Cited:
Denton Jr., Robert E., ed. The 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign: Political Communication and Practice. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017.
Wong, Julia Carrie. "'It might work too well' - The dark art of political advertising online." The Guardian, 22 March 2018.
ReplyDeleteThe first presidential campaign ad that I looked at was a static ad (just a picture) from Donald Trump. It reads: “MAKING AMERICA GREAT STARTS WITH YOU!” which I think speaks a lot to his character. His ad used “you” language in order to put the responsibility on voters and make them feel compelled to act and vote for him, if they want to MAGA. Behind these words, Trump is standing with his hand over his heart clearly doing the Pledge of Allegiance. This patriotism and use of red, white, and blue, along with the strong “you” language all point toward Trump’s main demographic of patriotic conservatives who have strong American ideals and want to preserve that aspect of our country through the election.
When compared to an ad put out by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, similarities can be found between Trump’s ad and Clinton’s. The ad I chose is a photo of Clinton smiling and looking joyful with her famous line “I’M WITH HER” in the right half of the photo. Below that is a button to “Add my name” to the list of people that are with her, presumably. Clinton uses “I” language on behalf of the reader to encourage a sense of togetherness, which was a huge platform in her campaign; Clinton utilized her angle as a feminist to her advantage, rallying the support of those who wanted their first female president. Her demographic is mostly females, but also anyone who doesn’t want to vote Trump. She also uses red, white, and blue in her ad color scheme, but it appears less patriotic than Trump’s ad. In her ad called “Mirrors”, which I viewed on Time.com, Clinton uses Trump’s own words against him and shows women of all ages and all colors reacting to the negative rhetoric of Trump. Not only does Clinton play up her own power as a feminist, but she also depicts Trump as the antagonist to women. As our textbook describes, “The overarching theme of the Clinton campaign’s advertising was Trump’s unfitness for office due to his temperament and lack of experience,” (Denton 2017) in addition to his inability to appropriately address women’s’ rights.
When compared to the presidential campaigns of America’s past, modern ads are not so different; they just have more pizazz to them. However, the angle of persuasion that the ads have is a common theme throughout history. One ad for the presidential election of Abe Lincoln caught my eye because it is less of an ad and more of a song. “Honest Old Abe” by D. Wentworth, Esq. and A Wide Awake was a song book published in Buffalo, NY that advocated the honest nature of Lincoln. This seems to target the entire country as a demographic because music was one of the only forms of entertainment they had pre-technology boom. A song is a clever way to get a voter to remember a candidate and develop a positive sense of association between that candidate and the music. Lincoln’s face is prominently featured in the middle of the ad with his classic profile on display. Nowhere on the front cover sheet does it say he’s running for president, but his demographic knew he was.
As a Democratic opposition to Abe Lincoln, John C. Breckinridge also produced a number of campaign ads himself. At the top of a black and white ad for his presidency and Joseph Lane’s vice presidency are the words “DEMOCRATIC TICKER”. Below that is a section called “Our Principles: The Constitution” and then lists off Constitutional ideals. The ad says that Breckinridge is from Kentucky and Lane is from Oregon, which means they’re trying to appeal to where they’re from; everyone loves to see someone from their own state/area succeed. Both men are pictured looking serious and stoic, both at ¾ facing angles. This makes them look serious, perhaps in an effort to match Lincoln’s lofty status and stature.
Works Cited:
Denton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Honest Abe Song: https://www.loc.gov/resource/lprbscsm.scsm0201/?sp=2 (it’s cool enough to want to check out)
-Dana Vogt
PART ONE Charlotte Gardner
ReplyDeleteThe first ad I watched was one from Donald Trump. I don’t remember seeing any Trump campaigns while he was running so this ad was new for me. When it began I didn’t even realize it was for his campaign. It began with footage of him at one of his rallies and it had more of that style of footage throughout cut with footage of a building being made and a “criminal” being taken away in an area that resembles the are around the U.S/Mexico border. An interesting piece that was missing from Trump’s ad that is present in many was his real interactions with people. One of the standard parts of campaigns is video of the candidate shaking hands with people on the street, or talking to kids in school, for example. Trump seems very isolated to his interactions with people seeing as he only incorporated rally footage to substitute this need for connection. I would say this ad is directed toward a middle-aged demographic. The next ad I watched was one from Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. This ad varied drastically in content and meaning from Trump’s ad. The Clinton ad was titled “Mirrors” and packed quite a message. The 30-second video began with clips of young girls looking at themselves in front of mirrors, scrutinizing their appearance. Then, old news clips of Trump began to play in between the scenes of the girls. In these clips, Trump was making sexist and offensive comments toward women and while the audio of Trump making these remarks continued, the girls were shown still looking at themselves in mirrors. This ad was clearly directed at Trump’s misogyny and lack of respect for women and aimed to show that these remarks from someone in power can have negative effects on those who grow up with them. Although the ad was a bit of a reality stretch, in that Trump’s remarks would directly cause young girls to become insecure, it delivered a great point, and the use of children was a great touch. In fact, Clinton’s campaign was based on attempting to knock Trump down, “The overarching theme of the Clinton campaign’s advertising was trump’s unfitness for office due to his temperament and lack of experience” (Denton 103). This ad was also recognized by Time for being one of the most notable ads of the 2016 election, “It’s a common technique in political ads to use your opponent’s words against them. But in Trump’s case, many of the best clips have been played to death. Clinton’s team used an innovative technique of showing people watching Trump instead, as in this powerful ad of young girls listening to Trump’s words about women” (Teague Beckwith, Time). This ad was probably directed toward voting parents, since the ad heavily relies on children to make the message.Next, I watched an ad from the Barack Obama campaign in 2008 called “Read My Plan”.
PART 2 Charlotte Gardner
DeleteThis two minute clip began with Obama sitting in front of the camera, addressing the audience wholly. I liked this tactic because it felt like he cared more as opposed to just making a voiceover or have another person do the voiceover. He then addressed four main concerns that he hopes to improve upon while he was in office. These points were accompanied by footage of Obama in schools, factories and speaking to communities. These videos of Obama interacting and speaking with “everyday” people makes him exceptionally more personable in my eyes. Also, the format of the ad was very clear and easy to follow and I would say because of this, the demographic could be anyone. The last ad I watched was one from Bernie Sanders in 2016. This five minute video was called “Progress”. This video opened with Bernie arriving and speaking at a large rally, similarly to Trump’s ad. But to contrast, Bernie added footage of him greeting many supporters, taking pictures with them and having conversations with groups of the audience. Then, Sanders has a sit-down with the camera and addresses his life growing up and how it has affected his campaign and his campaign promises. I would say this was definitely directed toward an older audience, which is probably because most of Bernie’s supporters were young people.
Work Cited
Beckwith, Ryan Teague. “Campaign Ads: Watch the Most Notable Ads of 2016.” Time, Time, 3 Nov. 2016,
time.com/4556441/campaign-ads-2016-notable-video/.
E., Denton Jr Robert. The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Springer
International Publishing, 2017.
Sophie Rodgers
ReplyDeleteDr. Burns
MSS 349-01
2 October, 2018
Advertisements have always been a critical political pool during campaigns. Since the days of Nixon and Kennedy, televised ads have “presented a rare form of communication that allowed candidates to create messages in a distilled form, free from journalistic gatekeeping, framing, or interpretation” (Denton). An ad that comes directly from the campaign gives the candidate the chance to present themselves to voters exactly the way they intend to, and is a big part of how they create their personal and professional brand.
The 2016 presidential election was a big year for negative and attack ads, understandably. Both candidates had very low favorability ratings, forcing both the Clinton and Trump campaigns to operate on a strategy to “convince the public that their candidate was the least bad alternative” (Denton). As a result, we saw a lot of comparative ads, contrasting the worst qualities of the opposing candidate to the best of the sponsored one.
Clinton’s ad technique in 2016 aligned well with this strategy. The majority of the ads her campaign ran focused on “Trump’s unfitness for office due to his temperament and lack of experience” (Denton). For me, one of the most effective ads she created was the one entitled “Mirrors”. Its purpose was to emphasize to voters Trump’s infamous attitudes and comments towards women. The ad featured several teenaged girls of different races, ethnicities, and body types looking at themselves in bathroom or bedroom mirrors, cut in with video and audio clips from Trump himself. Statements included “I’d look her right in that fat ugly face of hers”, and “A person who’s flat-chested is very hard to be a ten”. Sad, dramatic music plays in the background, and the ad ends with the words “Is this the president we want for our daughters?” across the screen. This ad managed to attack Trump and his candidacy while also highlighting a component of Clinton’s campaign, which was her work with families and children. To me, it brought attention to the fact that Clinton was trying to become to first ever female president, and had had to face sexism throughout her entire career. It fit into the Clinton campaign’s pattern strategy of using Trump’s own words; throwing direct quotes back at him, letting him do the smear campaign for them.
The majority of Trump’s ads followed his overarching theme of fear; fear for America and fear of Clinton being elected. One of his ads, titled “Two Americas- Economy”, opens with some grim, sepia-toned images of American families and workers. The narrator proclaims that “In Hillary Clinton’s America, the middle class is crushed, spending goes up, taxes go up, and hundreds of thousands of jobs disappear. It’s more of the same, but worse” (livingroomcandidate.org). After an image of a disinterested-looking Clinton, the ad changes directions, suddenly showing full, bright color video clips of Trump waving at fans. “In Donald Trump’s America, working families get tax relief, millions of new jobs are created, wages go up, and small business thrive. The American Dream, achievable” (livingroomcandidate.org). Trump’s tactic has long been to put doubt and confusion into voter’s minds, and this ad is no different. To a voter on the fence between the two candidates, this ad reinforces the idea that a vote for Clinton is a vote for four more years of bureaucratic corruption, incompetence, and greed. It paints her as another life-long politician that doesn’t care about the average, working-class American: a big chunk of Trump’s voter base. Although the ad does not contain any specific policies or plans to make these claims happen, it does address some key issues that middle-class families and workers care a lot about. If I were a struggling middle-class worker, I would see this ad as a promise for safety and security during turbulent times.
(Part 2)
DeletePrior to the 2016 election, televised ads took up a lot more of campaign budgets. The Wesleyan Media Project reported that only 117,000 presidential campaign ads were aired between September and October of 2016, compared to 256,000 aired during the same time period during the 2012 election.
Barack Obama’s campaign has often been praised as changing the standards for advertising and social media strategies. According to Bruce Newman, professor of marketing and Wickander Fellow at DePaul University, Obama’s campaign facilitated a shift that “was so sophisticated that now the for-profit and the nonprofit sectors have a lot to learn from what we’ve been doing in politics” (Conick). One of his ads, titled “Understands”, features a testimony from Joe Soptic. He begins by saying “I don’t think Mitt Romney understands what he’s done to people's’ lives by closing the plant. I don’t think he realized that people’s lives completely changed”. The ad continues to tell Joe’s story of being laid off from his local steel plant, losing his healthcare, and eventually being forced to take a job as a custodian, which paid “less than half his previous salary”. Finally, Joe’s wife became so sick that she ended up passing away from Stage IV cancer. This ad is an attack ad, but does a good job of coming off like a story. Its message was that Romney is a corrupt, entrenched businessman and politician, so far away in his ivory tower that he doesn’t even realize how his actions affect people. Obama positions himself as a champion of the working man, the everyday, average family. The emotional aspect of this ad cannot be ignored, and emphasises Obama’s commitment to fight for the middle class.
Campaign ads change and evolve each election year, based on the candidates, issues, and voters. It will be interesting to see what strategies are used now, for the 2018 midterms, and in 2020, for the next presidential election.
Works Cited
Conick , Hal. “How Social Media, Microtargeting and Big Data Revolutionized Political Marketing.” AMA, Marketing News, 26 Sept. 2018, www.ama.org/publications/MarketingNews/Pages/social-media-big-data-microtargeting-revolutionized-political-marketing.aspx.
Dunn, Scott, and John C. Tedesco . “Chapter 4: Political Advertising in the 2016 Presidential Election .” The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice, by Denton Jr Robert E., Springer International Publishing, 2017.
“ The Living Room Candidate.” The Living Room Candidate - Commercials - 1980 - Reagan's Record, www.livingroomcandidate.org/.
Jeffrey Evans
ReplyDeleteAfter watching many ads for presidential campaigns, I realized how easy this method is to reach and influence a huge amount of people. In a presidential campaign many factors come into play when trying to get people to vote for you, however they believe that “US presidential campaigns are often remembered – and understood – by their advertisements”. (Wong 2018). These ads play a huge role in getting an upper hand in a presidential campaign and maybe be the reason why a candidate wins over his/her opponent. The first ad that I looked at was a Donald Trump ad for the 2016 campaign. In this ad I believe he is targeting republicans all ages that are in favor of “a change”. He starts the ad by saying how he is here to replace a “failed and corrupt” system, which is basically a shot at the democrats because they are the ones that are in office. Also, they showed pictures of democrats like Barrack Obama to show that they are the ones who are corrupt. I believe that for Trump this is a good way to persuade his audience and make people believe that there is a change that has to be made. The next ad I looked at was an ad by Hilary Clinton, which I believe she was targeting all of the democrats. Her message in this ad was basically about how the children of the United States are watching what we are doing as a country and do we really want them to grow up listening to the “harsh” words of Donald Trump. She played clips of him swearing while kids were watching the television and also videos of him mentioning Mexicans in front of a Mexican child watching. In the book it states “The overarching theme of the Clinton campaign’s advertising was Trump’s unfitness for office due to his temperament and lack of experience” (Denton 2017). This is exactly what message she was trying to send to her audience. I also believed this was an effective ad however, Hilary Clinton has a bad reputation so I believe that is what killed her chances for winning Presidency. Next, I looked at an ad from Barrack Obama which was a short ad but also got to the point. I believe Obamas audience was people who were in favor of ending tax breaks for big oil, raising mileage standards and doubling renewable energy. These were the three topics that he mostly covered in this short ad. Also, he includes Mitt Romney in his ad basically saying that he is in favor of big oil. I believe that this ad also was effective at reaching his audience because big oil was a problem in 2012 and he uses his opponent Mitt Romney to show that they are in favor of something that is hurting the US. Lastly, I watched an ad for Mitt Romney for the 2012 campaign. His audience his republicans that again want a change. He believes that the government is too complicated, he says he’s here to simplify the government. Also he throws a shot at Barrack Obama by saying he failed to fix the economy. I believe in some aspects this ad helped him because it showed his audience that if they pick him there will be a change in the US.
Overall, I think that using ads in a presidential campaign is huge key part and if you have an audience and know how to communicate with them then you have a great chance of winning the election.
Work Cited
Denton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Wong, Julia Carrie. “'It Might Work Too Well': the Dark Art of Political Advertising Online.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?418167-101/trump-presidential-campaign-ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnNQ1q-IWrk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I40wjpk3JVg
PART 1
ReplyDeleteFor my first example I chose Hilary Clintons ad called “Role Models” which was discussed in our textbook (Denton, 104). This ad features clips of Donald Trump’s most controversial statements with young children watching it on television. Towards the end text comes on the screen that reads, “Our children are watching. What example will we set for them?” And then shows a clip of Clinton at a rally saying that we need to make future generations proud of this time in American history. This ad conveniently came out right before the Republican National Convention (Denton, 104). This ad seems to be targeted towards people who vote based on morality, considering a lot of the clips used were of Trump using curse words and mocking people. The ad also wanted to show that Hilary Clinton was the opposite of Trump in that she takes the moral high ground and wants to be a leader that is a role model. During Clinton’s campaign she used a lot of ads that featured clips of Donald Trump at rallies and events, using comparative ads to show a contrast of Trump and Clinton on a wide variety of topics (Denton, 108). Donald Trump’s ad was similar in that it was an attack ad on Clinton. The ad titled “Unfit”, the Trump campaign plays off of the fact that many people did not feel Clinton was fit for office due to her email scandal and investigation. It opens up with “Decades of lies, cover ups, and scandals have finally caught up with Hilary Clinton.” By saying that it has been “decades” of lies, cover ups, and scandals the Trump campaign is implying that this is just in Clinton’s nature as a leader. It brings up the FBI investigation and how America’s most sensitive secrets were revealed to “pervert Anthony Weiner.” This whole ad plays into the “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies. I think it does a good job at rallying Trump’s base and even persuading someone to vote for Trump. I could see how this ad could be influential in getting more voters because who does want a criminal in office? And in a way it appeals to those looking to “drain the swamp” because Clinton is painted as another corrupt politician.
PART 2
DeleteOne thing that I thought was interesting when looking at the ads was the ability to actually find them. I initially went to YouTube and did a simple search of “Hilary Clinton Role Models ad” and “Donald Trump Unfit ad.” When I search for Clinton’s ad, the full ad came up first and it was on Clinton’s official YouTube page whereas with Trump, most of the clips were from news outlets showing the ad and discussing it, not from an official Trump YouTube. I had to google the ad name and find just the ad clip itself posted by a small YouTube page called All Political Ads. Clinton’s ad to date has roughly 2 million views opposed to Trump’s ad that has just over 7 thousand views. I think that this is important to note because it shows a difference in campaign advertising techniques. Clinton posted videos to her official YouTube which made them easily accessible and shareable, especially to people like me who don’t have cable and instead just use online streaming services. Trump on the other hand relied heavily on Facebook to be able to target very specific demographics. In an article published by The Guardian interviewing Brad Parscale, the digital media director for Trump’s 2016 campaign, it says, “Parscale claims he typically ran 50,000 to 60,000 variations of Facebook ads each day during the Trump campaign.” This shows a difference in the way Trump and Clinton viewed campaign advertising. Clinton was looking for a long lasting ad that could be shared countless times to spread the same message to a wide audience. However, Trump was looking to target very specific groups using thousands of Facebook ads that weren’t really meant to last but rather be a continuous stream of new information and rhetoric to get voters talking.
I then chose to compare a campaign ad for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, both from the 2012 Presidential Election. Romney’s was primarily positive, titled “Find a Way”, talking about Romney’s successes as Governor of Massachusetts. It briefly mentions Obama and how he hasn’t gotten anything done but focuses mainly on Romney. This ad was targeted towards voters who were unhappy with Obama’s actions, or non-actions, in office. In contrast, Obama put out a negative ad that was more humorous and light hearted. In the ad titled “Big Bird a Criminal Mastermind” Obama pokes fun at Romney talking about Big Bird and how he planned on defunding PBS. I did chuckle a little bit watching the ad because it did seem ridiculous how many times Romney mentioned Big Bird. This makes me believe the ad was meant to undermine Romney and almost make him seem like a bit of a joke. These ads are both attack ads similar to those I watched from Trump and Clinton but the attacks, and specific subjects, seemed more issues based rather than character based which shows a difference in what kind of things voters find important and are looking for when choosing a candidate.
Work Cited
E., D. J. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
“Role Models” YouTube, uploaded by Hilary Clinton (2016, July 14). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrX3Ql31URA
“Most Brutal Trump Ad! Unfit… | Donald Trump TV Ad” Youtube, uploaded by All Political Ads (2016, November 3). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lHuPnAbKso
“Romney Campaign Ad: Find a Way” YouTube, uploaded by Wall Street Journal (2012, October 22). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2YvKdMchp0
“Obama Campaign Ad: Big Bird a Criminal Mastermind” YouTube, uploaded by Wall Street Journal (2012, October 9). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3y7U4VnDkA
Wong, J. C. (2018, March 19). 'It might work too well': The dark art of political advertising online. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy
The 2016 election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump was a very scored year when it came to political ads on both sides. Hillary’s ads focused on Trumps bigotry and ignorance, while Trumps ads focus on much wider array of topics, some focusing on Trump’s “best” while others focus on Hillary’s “worst.” Hillary’s most viewed campaign ad on YouTube is titled “Mirrors” with 5.6 million views. With a somber piano in the background, it shows young girls of all ages looking upon themselves in the mirrors while Donald Trump is played making sexist and degrading comments towards women over many years. It’s quite shocking actually when you consider that his profuse swearing and disrespect towards women are a common theme, even in his 2016 campaign. On the other hand, less than half of Trump’s campaign ads directly attacked Hillary Clinton, while the rest focused much more on making Donald Trump look good (mini biopics) and boasted his campaign promises. In Denton chapter 4, it references how Donald Trump was not running a campaign, but rather an entire movement Some ad’s directly call Hillary an enemy of the state, while others are completely absent of her image/presence. The ad titled “Donald Trump’s argument for America” not only included Hilary Clinton, but painted a picture of an entire establishment that is in control. Compared to the political ads of the 2012 election between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, both campaigns set to create a negative image of each other, with Obama’s most successful political ad of 2012 called “Swiss Bank Account”, which highlights Romney as a money man elitist, referencing offshore bank accounts and a strict political agenda. Mitt Romney’s most successful ad was called “The Romney Plan”, which focused on reversing all of Obama’s poor economic policies and reinvigorating the economy with Romney at the forefront. People hated Obama’s economic policies, which Romney focused on heavily. The aggressive approach that these ads took in the 2012 election was only a prelude to the intensity and controversy of the 2016 political ads.
ReplyDeletePolitical advertising, especially online advertising, has never been a key market until recently. From the article, “'It might work too well' - The dark art of political advertising online” by Julia Wong, it references how online political advertising was never a valued part of the political campaign until 1998. Alan Gould spent $100,000 on banner ads for the New York Times website for candidate Peter Vallone on his run for NY governor, the first use of significant online advertising in a political campaign. Since then, Obama’s campaign for election in 2008 had taken social media campaigning to the next level, where both sides invested over $22 million in online ad campaigns. Eight years later, the 2016 election had a combined spending on online/social media advertising of over $2 Billion, with the most spending on Facebook political ads being the Trump campaign.
Works cited:
“Mirrors” Hillary Clinton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHGPbl-werw
“Donald Trump’s Argument For America”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vST61W4bGm8
“Swiss Bank Account” Barack Obama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME_iZC2LGEw
“The Romney Plan”
http://theweek.com/articles/472294/anatomy-campaign-ad-romney-plan
Denton, D. E., JR. (2017). The 2016 US Presidential Campaign Political Communication and Practice. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Wong, Julia Carrie. “'It Might Work Too Well': the Dark Art of Political Advertising Online.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 19 Mar. 2018, www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/facebook-political-ads-social-media-history-online-democracy.